Cinnamon Chocolate Cake with Salted Honey Buttercream
Intensely chocolatey with a hint of spice this soft, fudgy Cinnamon Chocolate Cake pairs so well with the piquant, mellow sweetness that is salted honey buttercream.
Servings: 10 servings
Calories: 701kcal
Equipment
- This Cake uses 3 x 6-inch cake tins (see notes for 8-inch cake)
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 180 g/ ¾ cup butter - softened
- 180 g/ 1 cup dark muscovado sugar (lump free - see tips in main text)
- 180 g/ 1 ½ cups plain (all purpose) flour
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 3 tablespoon cocoa powder
- 3 eggs
- 6 tablespoon buttermilk
- 3 tablespoon whole milk
- 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 125 g/ 1 cup dark chocolate - roughly chopped (I used 65% cocoa solids)
For the Buttercream
- 300 g butter/ 1 ⅓ cup butter - softened
- 240 g / 2 ⅛ cup icing (confectionary) sugar - sieved
- 3 tablespoon runny honey
- ¼ teaspoon seasalt
Decoration
- Ground cinnamon
- Cinnamon sticks (optional)
Instructions
- Grease and line 3 x 6 inch baking tins with baking parchment
- Preheat oven 175C/ 325F/ GM3
- Weigh the flour, cocoa, baking powder & cinnamon into a bowl
- Put the chocolate into a small heatproof bowl and gently melt the chocolate in the microwave (or over a bain-marie) and set aside
- In another bowl cream the butter and sugar together using electric beaters until fluffy and paler in colour
- Beat in the eggs, one at a time
- Sieve half of the flour mixture into the batter and blend
- Add the buttermilk, milk and vanilla extract and mix
- Sieve in the remaining flour and mix until just combined
- Take a heaped tablespoon of the cake batter and quickly mix it into the melted chocolate then quickly blend this mixture back into the rest of the cake batter
- Divide the batter between the 3 cake tins, level slightly and bake for 22-25 minutes until the sponge springs back when lightly pressed or a skewer comes out clean
- Let cool in the tins for 2 minutes, then remove from the tins, peel off the baking parchment from the bottom of each sponge cake and let cool completely on a wire rack
Make the buttercream
- Use a pestle and mortar to crush the sea salt to a powder
- Using electric beaters whip the butter and icing sugar together - add the icing sugar 1 tablespoon at a time
- Beat in the honey, followed by ½ of the powdered salt
- Taste - add a little more powdered salt to suit tastes
Assemble the cake
- Lay one chocolate sponge cake onto a board and spread ¼ of the icing on top
- Place another layer of cake carefully on top of the layer of icing and top with another ¼ of the icing, spread it out and top with the final layer of cake
- Spread another ¼ icing on top of the cake and use the remaining icing to pipe rosettes on the top of the cake
- Dust with a little ground cinnamon and decorate with cinnamon sticks if desired
Notes
If you wish to use standard 8-inch tins, my suggestion is to simply double the recipe. In an ideal world, you would scale up the recipe to bake it using 5 eggs, but that leads to some fiddly measurements. Making double is far easier - just ensure you do not fill your sandwich tins more than ⅔ full with the batter and use the leftover batter to make a few cupcakes (freezable). You perhaps will not need to double the buttercream though - I'd suggest making 1.5 times that stated in the recipe.
Nutrition
Calories: 701kcal | Carbohydrates: 69g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 46g | Saturated Fat: 29g | Cholesterol: 154mg | Sodium: 441mg | Potassium: 306mg | Fiber: 3g | Sugar: 50g | Vitamin A: 1293IU | Calcium: 114mg | Iron: 3mg